Melissa Vetters

Research Associate, Tracing Networks Project

MA, Ph.D. (University of Heidelberg/Germany)

Melissa studied European Prehistory, Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Heidelberg University in Germany and participated in excavations in Egypt (Siwa Oasis), Greece (Tiryns) and Turkey (Miletus, Oylum Höyük). After the completion of her master, she worked as a research assistant for the Tiryns project of the German Archaeological Institute in Greece. Her PhD thesis on the terracotta-figurines of Late Bronze Age Tiryns concentrated on reconstructing ritual in the Mycenaean period by means of contextual analyses. Since October 2009 she is a research associate in the Tracing Network subproject “Cross-Craft Interaction in the cross-cultural context of the late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean” at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History and the School of Museum Studies. The project has been initiated by Dr Ann Brysbaert and focuses on identifying areas of craft production in Late Bronze Age Tiryns, investigating exchange of techniques and materials across a range of crafts and situating the craft persons within the larger social network of Mycenaean palatial and postpalatial societies.

Research

Selected Recent Publications

Cohen, C., Maran, J. and M. Vetters 2011. An ivory rod with a cuneiform inscription, most probably Ugaritic, from a final palatial workshop in the Lower Citadel of Tiryns. Archäologischer Anzeiger 2010:2, 1-22.

Vetters, M. 2011. Thou shalt make many images of thy gods – a chaîne opératoire approach to Mycenaean religious rituals based on iconographic and contextual analyses of plaster and terracotta figures. In: A. Brysbaert (ed.), Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology. A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean. London: Routledge, 30-47.